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It’s raining AGAIN! Yuck. I love the smell of rain, and splashing in the puddles with my boots on, and when everything looks all “clean” afterwards – but common now. It’s been raining for the past few days and it’s dragging me down! Last summer it rained almost every weekend, which meant I didn’t get to do much. This summer I need to do stuff. I need to go camping, and go for walks with the dogs, get a sun tan, have a BBQ. I need to NOT HAVE THIS MUCH RAIN. Rain at night time, while I’m sleeping. My sinuses are terrible and when it rains my head wants to explode. This is not fun for me. My boyfriend also works outside so he needs warm weather and no rain in order to make money. We are so broke.Okay…complaining over 🙂

Anyways……I’ve been having some real crazy dreams now that I’m weaning myself off my meds. They are quite vivid and sometimes very scary! I’m also noticing that it doesn’t take very long for things to go back to normal for me. By normal I mean, me being a huge bitch when I shouldn’t be. I have a really short temper again, and seem to be snapping for no reason. This is one of those things I need to continue to work on every single day. This is the reason I need to take up yoga or meditation. I need to relax. Up until now I haven’t been the kind of person who thinks before they react. I just react. I’m a passionate person, what can I say? I’m working on it. Other then that, the weaning is going well. Fingers crossed that it stays that way!

My boyfriend and I went to a BBQ at my parents house the other night and I told my mom I was going off of my medication. I’ve already told my dad and he seemed very supportive of it. My dad hates medication. My mom started to ask me all these questions about why I was taking them in the first place – as if she wasn’t there when I was in highschool and was self harming. It made me pretty angry and upset. She kept asking me why I felt I needed them in the first place. I just said “because I need them”. It’s hard to explain, especially to people that just aren’t going to get it. I was also pretty confused because when I told her I was going to start taking them a year ago, we talked about it and she seemed to understand and agree that I probably should have been on them for a long time. I’ve been depressed since I was about 17. It’s exhausting having to feel like crap almost every day of your life. Not all day, everyday – but everyday. I waited so long before going on antidepressants because I didn’t like the idea of having to be on medication in order to feel “better” (and I still don’t). I just got to a point where I was too tired of fighting it. I was too tired of denying the fact that I had a problem that I couldn’t control on my own. I had been trying to deal with things and I had seen numerous counselors that I felt I wasn’t “clicking” with, so I wanted to take a break. I wanted an easier solution. It’s hard to live like this every day, but I know that I need to be patient. I need to make a conscious effort to do everything in my power to be successful at being happy, without medication. Challenge accepted! It’s kind of a pride thing too. I feel ashamed that I can’t fix myself. I feel like I should be able to do this because I’m a strong person.

I baked this weekend. Me. Krysta. I BAKED!!! I never bake. I baked pumpkin muffins and carrot muffins. The first batch turned out pretty terrible, but I think I redeemed myself with the 2nd batches. I am on my way to becoming an adult, because I can bake 🙂 Baking is one of the things I can add to the list of things that make me happy!!!

Another thing to add to the list is SHOPPING – but I have no money. Chris and I are so very poor right now. I think I’m still in the initial shock of having to pay rent and groceries (even though I’ve done it before). It always surprises me how much we eat. Well, if I’m being honest – it surprises me how much he eats! In my last relationship where we lived together we bought separate groceries because he thought it would be cheaper for him, and because he barely ate any of the foods I ate – however, if we did eat the same meals I always bought the food for it. One of my friends who lives with her boyfriend pays for groceries every 3rd time they go grocery shopping because her boyfriend eats SO MUCH MORE then she does. I’m not too sure now how I feel about splitting the grocery bill. I want to split it, because I know that’s how things work when you’re in a relationship, right? It’s hard because I eat the same thing almost all the time. I have a routine with my eating now. When I was living on my own before and buying my own groceries it was pretty inexpensive. Now we go grocery shopping once a week and it’s killing me. We don’t buy everything once a week, but we always seem to need more food!! It’s driving me crazy! Where is it all going? We’re going to be living on the streets pretty soon, eating tuna out of the can. I feel like I’m taking on the burden of this on my own. Chris works with his Dad and they operate a Concrete Construction business in town. They make pretty good money – when they are working. Like I said earlier, it’s been raining a lot, so they can’t work. They also only work during the spring and summer months, so he needs to make 12 months of a salary in 6 months time. He went on unemployment this winter for the first time. He usually worked another job in the winter, but he really hated it, so I supported his decision (…okay, I influenced his decision) to quit. Unemployment wasn’t paying him all that well, and he didn’t seem to mind. He never expressed any interest in finding other work for his down time. I’m trying to do the best I can to make extra money. I’m not an Independent Consultant for PartyLite Canada and I’m trying my best to make some extra cash from that. I don’t feel he’s making the same effort. I’m afraid to bring it up because I don’t know if it’s a reasonable thing to ask him, to get another job. I don’t want him working 70 hour work weeks or anything, but if he had some other income coming in that would be SO MUCH HELP. Especially since we want to buy a house sometime in the near future. Maybe I’ll wait until he’s in a really good mood, and bring it up then. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to stop taking my antidepressants. I’ve been taking Venlafaxine (Effexor) for almost a year now. I don’t have any HUGE complaints about it. Overall its been pretty good. I just think I’m one of those lucky people that doesn’t have any crazy reactions to medications. Even when I first started taking it I never experience any nausea, headaches (more then usual), or things like that. The only two areas it has negatively effected me is my weight (I’m almost 95% positive this is to blame), and some “intense” feelings. I’ve read really horrible things about the withdrawal from this medication. Horrible, horrible things. I’m hoping because I’m on a low dose it won’t be too bad. I’ve been doing some research on the drug and found that a lot of people have complained that it effected their weight. It’s not a type of antidepressant that typically effects it drastically, but there are still cases of course. Since being on the drug I’ve been way more sensitive to certain kinds of foods, and have been retaining water like crazy. I’ve gained about 25 pounds since starting on Venlafaxine, and haven’t changed my eating or exercise habits drastically to cause the weight gain.There are also times where I feel like I’m sort of having an out of body experience. Everything slows down and seems very unreal (if that makes any sense at all). I also feel as if it has taken all my feelings away. I have emotions, don’t get me wrong, but they are very short lived. My brain seems to be moving a million miles a minute that I don’t have time to process anything properly – everything just is what it is and I go on with my life. That’s not exactly a bad thing, but I would definitely like to get some feeling back into my life. Overall, I just don’t want to be on any medications anymore. I stopped talking oral contraceptives about a year ago, after being on them for 9 years, because I didn’t want something controlling my body. I was stopping a natural production, and I didn’t feel comfortable with that anymore. I don’t like the idea of drugs anymore. I don’t want anything “artificial” in my system, telling my body what to do or how to act. I’m worried about how this is going to effect my mood though. I’m not going to lie, I’m quite the moody person. I also suffer from anxiety, which has been a relief not to have to deal with since taking my meds. I need to do everything possible to deal with my depression and anxiety without medication. My boyfriend is a little worried about the outcome as well. Don’t get me wrong, I know he’ll love me through thick and thin – but it’s probably going to get difficult. I’m sure there will be a time period where I’m very overwhelmed, and very irritable. One of the reasons I finally decided to go on antidepressants was because of the way I was acting towards some of my friends and family. I had this horrible attitude that I shouldn’t have had towards them. For no reason I always felt negative and felt like everyone was to blame. I didn’t want to talk and open up, I just wanted to be a bitch to get everyone to leave me alone. It’s going to be hard to adjust at first.I already exercise and eat well, so that’s one thing that will help me a lot. I’m booking an appointment with a counselor very soon, so that I’m still going to take care of my mood, I’m researching more into massage therapy and acupuncture to help with depression and relaxation, since I have coverage for them through my work, and I’m going to start attending yoga classes at my gym. I need to make it my goal, every morning, to be happy. It’s going to be difficult, but I’m confident that I will get this depression under control without using medications. Wish me luck!